Planning & Transportation

The Herald-Sun reports,

Developers of the 300 East Main Street project in Carrboro have rearranged and resubmitted their application to town staff members in hopes of hastening the project's approval and possibly beginning construction toward the end of 2007.

The development, which will include a hotel, office space, retail shops and restaurants, has been broken into two separate conditional use applications, said Laura Van Sant of Main Street Properties, the company that owns the strip mall and surrounding properties.

Read the full story here.

Van Sant also said the hotel interested is a "mid-priced national chain." I'm eager to see a hotel in Carrboro, but I hope it doesn't come with huge, tacky signs.

What are other folks thinking about this project? Are there still concerns? Or are we ready for this?

Heidi Perry, chair of Carrboro's Transportation Advisory Board, sent us this link to an article on a new trend in traffic "management" in Europe.

Seven European cities and regions are doing away with traffic signs, "dreaming of streets free of rules and directives. They want drivers and pedestrians to interact in a free and humane way, as brethren -- by means of friendly gestures, nods of the head and eye contact, without the harassment of prohibitions, restrictions and warning signs....

"They demand streets like those during the Middle Ages, when horse-drawn chariots, handcarts and people scurried about in a completely unregulated fashion. The new model's proponents envision today's drivers and pedestrians blending into a colorful and peaceful traffic stream.

"It may sound like chaos, but it's only the lesson drawn from one of the insights of traffic psychology: Drivers will force the accelerator down ruthlessly only in situations where everything has been fully regulated. Where the situation is unclear, they're forced to drive more carefully and cautiously."

The unchecked growth charted for NW Chapel Hill will not only effectively choke off many of the neighborhoods in the area, but will, in a metastatic line of attack have negative effects on the entire town.

Can schools absorb 1000 new students?
Can roads (especially Weaver Dairy Road) absorb thousands of additional cars?
Can an over stressed environment absorb more impervious surfaces, pollution, and waste?

We cannot continue to just focus on each of these proposals as though they were an entity unto themselves. We must see how each one of them fits into the greater whole of the huge number of residences already here.

This “gateway” entrance into Chapel Hill will be one that greets people with bumper to bumper traffic. Neighborhoods to the west of MLK Jr. Blvd. will be isolated from the option of walkability that this area has the potential to offer.

There must be a moratorium on all plans in the NW Quadrant. There must be a study done on how this area can continue to exist as a viable part of the community if development continues in this haphazard fashion.